In the days when half an acre was regarded as a small garden the idea of growing vegetables in window boxes would have been a huge joke. Today, with our smaller plots and smaller families, the idea is not so laughable. Seedsmen, too, have been working for us to produce dwarfer, tidier plants that can be accommodated in boxes, tubs and other containers. There are, too, the ubiquitous growing bags so that anyone with a fancy for home-grown beans or peppers or tomatoes or other salad crops can easily indulge this. All right, you will hardly have surplusfor freezing but you should be able to enjoy good early pickings. And what a triumph, to be able to serve French beans with a real snap to them, freshly picked from your own window sill. French beans, especially the dwarf varieties that need no staking, are a vegetable particularly suited to container growing. Sow a dozen seeds in a standard growing bag, which is usually 3 feet long and 18 inches wide. There are also mini bags suitable for small spaces and crops. Sometimes bags may be cheaper but slightly smaller than standard and may not be sogreat a bargain if they support fewer plants. So buy the largest you have room for. If you have no room for a growing bag but must plant in the window box, you should space out beans at 4-6 inches apart, thinning as they germinate to 8-12 inches apart. Look for a variety such as ‘Cyrus’, which produces those slim round crisp pods served in any modest restaurant in France but in only the grandest elsewhere. The beans should be planted I inch, or a little more, deep some time between mid-April and early May depending on the weather. The plants of ‘Cyrus’ reach 18 inches and the crop comes early. Start feeding with a proprietary feed as soon as you pick the first beans and this will encourage subsequent crops. Keep the compost moist at all times, but not wet.
Tomatoes are probably the most frequently grown growing bag crop and many gardeners with plenty of open ground still prefer this method of cultivation. For one thing it is easier to water a relatively small bag, and for another it can be sited close to a sunny wall to encourage earlier crops. Tomato plants can be raised from seed sown in mid-April in heat and pricked out and carefully tended indoors until early June when it is safe to plant outdoors. Seed will certainly give you the
variety of your choice but now that garden centres are offering a wider range—from the big ugly ‘Marmande’ to the tiny cherry-sized ‘Sweet 100′—it is infinitely easier to buy plants. Choose sturdy green ones with their first flowers just showing and avoid those that have a blue tinge—they have been chilled—or straggly yellow ones that are past their best. Plant three tomatoes per growing bag, or four if you have ‘Sweet 100′, which makes a taller, less bushy plant.
Some sort of support will be necessary, either one of the specially devised but admittedly rather expensive support systems for growing bags, or wires wrapped around the bag and secured to an adjacent wall or fence. Tomatoes can also be grown in 12 inch pots, where they can be provided with the more usual stake; do this at the same time as you transfer the plants from the pots in which they were bought so that you don’t disturb the roots.
To encourage tall, fruit-bearing plants you must be diligent about removing the side shoots that develop in the leaf axils. Tie the plant to its support loosely but at regular intervals and pick out the tip when it has set four or five trusses. Encourage fruit to set by gently shaking the plants from time to time to scatter the pollen; you may have to do this more often if your plants are high up on a balcony and bees and other insects have not yet discovered them. Tomatoes need plenty of water, and feeding as soon as the first truss has set. Use a proprietary tomato food rather than a general purpose one, and follow the instructions as to quantity and dilution. More is not better when it comes to feeding plants.
Peppers are not easy to crop in the open garden unless the summer is particularly benign but are often successful in boxes, bags or pots close to the house where they can benefit from the heat bounced off the walls. Buy plants from a nursery for planting and staking as soon as the first flower opens, usually around the same time as tomatoes, in early June. Feed with tomato fertilizer and water well. Treat them much as you do tomatoes in fact, although no side shooting is necessary. To keep fruit coming pick it regularly when green; if you leave it to turn red on the plant you will reduce the crop severely. Green peppers left in a warm dry place will turn red of their own accord in time.
Aubergines (eggplants) are worth a try if you like them or Greek moussaka of which they are an essential ingredient. Again they do best against a sunny wall, three to a standard growing bag, with support for the stems. Buy plants and set in position as soon as the first flowers open, or they will grow away too fast and not get fruit. There is no need to remove side shoots, but taking out the growing tips when they reach I foot encourages bushy plantswith two main shoots rather than one. In hot weather the flowers can be syringed occasionally to help fruit to form. Regular feeding with a tomato fertilizer will also be necessary as, of course, will regular watering. Vegetables are very largely composed of water so it is inevitable that they need a lot.
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